History on Book TVView Video Clip Purchase Video2006 Roosevelt Reading Festival: Robert RosenSaturday, September 16 at 12:15 pm and Sunday, September 17 at 5:30 am

Six
million Jews died in the Holocaust. Since the 1960s, when a post-World
War II
generation of historians came of age, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
has increasingly
been seen as, at best, standing idly by while this atrocity occurred. But
is this an accurate
picture? In his new book, SAVING THE JEWS:
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust
(Thunder's Mouth Press, April 25, 2006), Robert N. Rosen argues that, in
fact, FDR was one
of the few men of his time who understood -- and sought to defeat -- the
enormous threat
Hitler posed, and that the Roosevelt Administration did all that could
reasonably be done,
under the circumstances, to save the Jews and other victims of Nazism.

Based on vigorous research, this narrative and
interpretive history places FDR's actions in
the context of the time period in which they occurred -- an era characterized
by The Great
Depression, widespread American isolationism, strict immigration legislation,
and extensive
anti-Semitism. Rosen reveals that, seen in this light, FDR's achievements
in battling Nazism
and saving Jews were very nearly monumental. "Roosevelt did not abandon
the Jews of
Europe," he writes. "On the contrary, he led the worldwide coalition
against Nazism in a war
that took fifty million lives."

SAVING THE JEWS offers
extensive evidence of FDR's close ties to Jewish leaders, and his
appointment of many Jews to high-level positions, including the Supreme Court.
Rosen
outlines the numerous attempts FDR made to allow Jewish refugees to enter
the United
States -- and explains why, at weaker periods of his presidency, FDR simply
didn't have the
political capital to wage these battles. He also offers a full picture of
the overwhelming mood
in the country -- the strong desire to remain neutral regarding European
affairs and the
distrust of anything that smacked of internationalism. And he points to divisions
in the
American Jewish community, which had not reached a consensus as to the best
policy for
freeing their European counterparts from Nazi persecution.
Rosen takes on each of the chief accusations frequently leveled at Roosevelt
with regard to
his handling of the Holocaust, and demonstrates why these charges are unfair
and
unfounded. These include:

• The SS St. Louis Incident
-- Here, a shipload of German Jewish refugees was turned
away from Cuba and not permitted to dock in the United States. Rosen explains
the
behind-the-scenes attempts the Roosevelt administration made to convince
Cuba to
permit these Jews to enter;
why making an exception in U.S. immigration policy
was
impossible; and how FDR's camp arranged for the ship's passengers

(the majority
of
whom survived the war) to be taken in by other European countries and avoid
being
returned to Germany

.

• Failure to denounce the Holocaust -- Although FDR has been described
as being part of
a conspiracy of silence with regard to the Holocaust, Rosen shows that there
was no such
conspiracy, and that FDR was not silent. He points, for example, to a published
and widely disseminated 1942 declaration condemning the German policy of
extermination of
the Jews on which Roosevelt joined with Churchill, Stalin, and ten Allied
governments in exile.

• The Allies' decision not to bomb Auschwitz -- Rosen points out that
even Roosevelt's
critics agree that the window of opportunity to bomb Auschwitz was both small
and late in
the war. He also explains that World War II's aerial bombardment capabilities
were not
very precise, and that Jewish leaders and the U.S. government were unwilling
to take the
risk that bombing would kill Jewish inmates, but fail to halt the extermination
process.

Judging Roosevelt's actions -- or inactions
-- by the lens of what we now know -- and feel -- about the unprecedented
atrocities committed by Hitler against the Jews is to hold FDR to an
impossible standard, argues Rosen. With extensive documentation, SAVING THE
JEWS demonstrates FDR's prescience in understanding the real
threat Hitler posed, not only to the
Jews, but to democracy in Europe and in the U.S. And Rosen outlines how
Roosevelt's
decisions about saving the Jews necessarily had to be subordinated to his
highest goal --
saving the world from Nazism.

"Hitler's immediate and seemingly attainable goal in Europe was to
murder eleven million
Jews, not six million. Franklin Roosevelt prevented Hitler from achieving
his goal," writes
Rosen. A fascinating and fast-moving read, SAVING
THE JEWS offers a comprehensive
understanding of the Roosevelt Administration's commendable record regarding
the
Holocaust.